Nothing but Palms and Waves

We have been visiting a lot of major cities around the country in our travels. Today we decided to ditch the big cities and people and head to one of the cutest little towns that I have ever visited: Hawi.
 
Hawi (pronounced Ha-vee which really messed us up when looking at maps and street signs) has one little main street with a few shops and restaurants and that's about it. Everything around it is just rain-forest with a few little houses sprinkled in.

We got an early start on the day (I have no idea why). It maybe had something to do with getting a nice burn on at the beach the day before and going to bed early but that's a different story...

Anyways we got to Hawi around 10am. This is where we learned first hand about "Island Time." Back on the east coast everyone is about getting ahead. Businesses have to open up early or else they lose customers and therefore money. In Hawaii that's not important. Everything opens at 11am and closes at 8pm. Sometimes you're lucky to find a place that even has those hours. So naturally when we got there super early in the morning (10) nothing was open so we decided to head past Hawi to the really cool cliff that was just beyond the town.
 
Luckily that was open
The landscape here is so wild. It's like nothing you can find back on the mainland. The weather is too but you'll hear all about that in another post coming up. The most entertaining part of the cliff was listening to all the tourists. Okay okay we are tourists too but I mean the annoying tourists. We're the good tourists. There was one little kid throwing a fit about his family wanting to hike down to the bottom of the cliff to the beach. I mean a fit. He was pouting and yelling and eventually walked away as his family went the other direction. Oh, did I say little kid? I meant grown-ass man whose kids and wife wanted to hike. You just wouldn't have known that by watching him.
 
Me watching this all go down and not paying attention to the picture
So that was fun. On the way back to Hawi we saw a really cool stream on the side of the road and it was so pretty that we had to stop for pictures.
 
A couple of locals told us there was a cool waterfall just down the stream from there but I didn't think my dad's little CRV would have liked treking through the jungle so we just continued on to Hawi. Of course my Xterra could have handled it no problem!

Everything was open this time! Our  first stop was for something called Kava Tea. I'm not really sure if it's just a Hawaiian thing or if it's a hippie thing but either way it's gross. I had some last time I was here but Rose didn't know how awful it was yet so naturally we had to get some for her to try.
 
Faces were made just seconds later
Kava is this gross root that they mash up and make into a yucky tea. The reason people drink it, aside from tricking people into making funny faces, is because the kava root has anesthetic properties. It makes you, and especially your mouth and tongue, feel all tingly.
 
Our lunch date
 
We also got some fudge as a chaser
After getting all nice and tingly we went for lunch across the street at a place that has "the best pina coladas." I feel like every restaurant around here has "the island's best" something or another. This one I might believe though. Yes, it cost $12 but it was really good. Rose, our resident ice cream-ologist believes that they put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in when they blend it. This is not for sure so I'm not officially giving away any island secrets but we are definitely going to try it ourselves later. It sounds good regardless.

After Hawi on our way home we saw a State Park (I think that's what it was) that looked fun so we stopped in. The parking lot had some old Hawaiian buildings that were like 600 years old or something like that and a lot of little lava rock walls.
 
It looked like your stereotypical Hawaii
The coolest part of the park was how the waves were crashing up on some of the rocks. We stayed here for almost a half our just trying to get the perfect wave crashing picture. We probably could have stayed longer. There's something weird about trying to get wave crashing pictures that makes you always want to stay for the next one. It might be better than the last!
 
 
We made the our way up the mountain to the house after that to relax for a bit before dinner. Keith was cooking so we didn't want to be late!
 
Rose's new favorite flower